This is the real shit.

Warning: Angst, insults, weapons, dangerous situation, gore.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN HETALIA. I have fun manipulating their characters, though

Infiltration

"You said there were security precautions?" Ivan asked, as he had only tuned into Red's warning at that point in her explanation, having been too busy hauling the canoes up onto the bank to have heard everything she had to say. He was walking beside Red now, had been doing so for the past half hour, the girl pointedly pretending that he did not exist. He remembered hearing much of Red in the past—how much she disliked him, at least.

"Yup," Red replied, not bothering to look at him. She began to point. "Over there are hidden nets, there just a little ways down some pits with all sorts of sharp things inside—"

"Sounds sort of," Ivan began. "Prehistoric."

Red scoffed. "No shit, Einstein, I was joking. We got explosives, what did you expect? A giant boulder?"

Ivan frowned. Alfred hadn't disciplined this one enough, it seemed. "Hmm, then you are compensating for your lack of knowledge about the type of explosives that have been hidden. Da, that seems logical."

Red stopped dead. The river was dark stripe stretching along the foot of the hill behind them. "Mines," she replied, though not with as much bite as Ivan thought she would have. It was barely a whisper.

"Mines?" Ivan repeated. "Is that the extent of your knowledge, then?"

"Mines," Red ground out more loudly. "New mines… they just rigged the new mines. Everyone, stop!"

At her command, everyone froze and turned to stare at her. All except Feliciano.

"Feli," Ludwig snapped.

"Ve, what?" Feliciano frowned in confusion, still continuing on. "There is nothing here, see? Nothing to be afr—" He set his foot down again, and when he did there was an echoing click, his shoe sinking deeper into the earth in an abrupt shunt. Feliciano flung out his arms, almost stumbling, and Ludwig uttered a string of unintelligible sounds until the Italian could find his footing again. Feliciano blinked at Red with wide, wet eyes. "Ve, I'm sorry…"

"Do not move, Feliciano-kun," Kiku warned. Beside him Ludwig's face was leeched of all color and he appeared like a deer caught in the headlights of a gigantic 18-wheeler. He was so still it was as if he was also standing on a tripped mine.

"Why… it did not go off." Francis stared, eyes wide. He had seen many a man blasted to bits by landmines, but this was only one of a handful of occasions when he was confronted with an activated, but undetonated explosive. It seemed all the more unusual purely because this was Feliciano and not some soldier of his.

"It must be faulty," Arthur concluded. It was really the only logical conclusion, and as much as he knew everyone must know it at the back of their minds, he just had to say it, because not saying it would cause them all unneeded panic.

"Da," Ivan agreed, trying his hardest to work out how the fuck they were going to get around this one. Then he recalled how his miscalculations with Jeanne and her group had gotten both Gilbert and Lovino dead, and he wasn't so sure if he could actually make decisions like that anymore. "Or it may just be slow… his foot might not be in the right spot as well."

"Do not make him anxious!" Yao hissed, as if shouting would trip all the mines in the vicinity as well as the one Feliciano was standing on.

Feliciano whimpered, and tears rolled down his face. He sniffed a little, but he dare not sob. He knew how slight a movement it took to set the weapon off. "Please… help me. I-I don't want to—"

"You won't," Ludwig insisted, finally finding his voice. "Just… hold still, Feli. Don't move. I'm… I'm coming to get you, okay?"

"What?" Alfred squawked, staggered. But before he could say anymore, Ludwig had taken a cautious step toward Feliciano. They all held their breaths as his foot touched the leaf-strewn ground. When nothing happened, they refilled their strangled lungs.

"You're crazy, man," Alfred snapped, eyes wide. His hands were balled into fists, shaking and white-knuckled. "You're a fucking crazy-ass bastard sonofabitch."

"Shh, shh!" Matthew urged, barely able to speak himself for his quaking. "Let him concentrate."

Ludwig had to admit, the talking had been better compared to all of their eyes trained on his every move. He moved with his arms stretched out, as if balancing on a wire, and every time he set his foot down he winced and braced to be blown to pieces. His mind was screaming at him to stop moving, but his feet kept going until he was standing right in front of Feliciano. As soon as their eyes met, everything stopped. Nothing else mattered outside of Feliciano's safety. He could only see Feliciano's teary eyes, so wide and scared, and that was all Ludwig needed to forget his worries. He extended a hand. "Feli… take my hand. I'm going to get you off of there."

Feliciano stiffened and shook his head, hand curled against his mouth to muffle the sobs that were crawling up his throat. "L-Luddy… no, I'm s-scared."

"You don't have to be," Ludwig told him with a confidence that came from nowhere and was backed by nothing but air. He motioned with his fingers. "Come on."

Feliciano reached out and hesitantly took Ludwig's offered hand with trembling fingers. More tears made trails down Feliciano's face. "Please, be careful."

As soon as Ludwig's leg twitched backward, Alfred drew in a sharp breath and threw up his hands. The sudden movement was so quick that everyone tensed and held their breaths.

"That's it!" Alfred exclaimed with a near hysterical laugh. "We're all dead! Well, it's been a good run—"

"Dad," Red ground out, and Alfred whipped his head around to face her. She hardly ever called him that. The girl's eyes were narrowed, glaring. "Shut up."

Ludwig closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding Feliciano's hand in a vice grip. I'm not letting go, Feli, he thought. I won't leave you here. You deserve a better fate than this. "Listen to me, Feli. I'm going to step back now. When I say so, lift your foot and step toward me, all right?"

Feliciano nodded, swallowing. He forgot to breathe as Ludwig took one step back, then two. Please, please, please… He was so focused on his mental chant, that Ludwig had to repeat himself twice before Feliciano heard him. "Now, Feli. Move."

Feliciano's legs locked up, and all the breath went out of him. He went deathly pale, eyes wide and wet, shaking his head imploringly. He held Ludwig's hand like it was all that kept him from plummeting to his death off a skyscraper. "Please," he barely whispered.

Ludwig's heart kicked into overdrive, then. If this didn't work, if he made Feliciano walk to his death…

Crunch.

Everyone jumped as Feliciano's shoe sank down into the fresh snow before him. It was the one that had been on the mine.

Ludwig let out a breath, almost laughing, near hysterical at the possibility of his plan working. "Ja, ja, come on," he urged, tugging on Feliciano's hand just a bit. "Almost there, Feli. Just a little more."

Feliciano sniffed and nodded, forcing back his tears so that he could concentrate. He took a deep breath and began to carefully step off and away from the landmine. When he was a few feet away, Ludwig guiding him along, the German forced him to stop. Once it was through, Ludwig couldn't keep a smile off his face. Hell, he even laughed.

"You're off," he said, shocked. "Feli, you did it!" Finally, he didn't screw up. Thank God.

Feliciano's smile was more beautiful than Ludwig had ever seen. "Si, I did it! Ve~!" He swiped off his beanie, waved it around in his hand a few times—and tossed it.

They all drew a collective breath, and Matthew stretched out his arms, trying desperately to catch the garment. His fingers brushed the knitted fabric, weighed down with water and sweat. No! He felt his heart nearly gave out as it sailed past him, unobstructed.

"Run!" Red shouted before taking off through the woods. Not knowing where the rest of the landmines were nor really thinking at all, the rest raced after her. Ludwig snatched Feliciano by his wrist and yanked him along, swinging him in front of him and giving him a shove forward.

They had barely made it off the hill before there was a deep rumble that shook their feet followed by a deafening blast. The whole hill erupted in flame and smoke, and Feliciano stumbled to his knees when he glanced back.

Ludwig pulled him back up and pushed him forward. "Don't look!" he ordered, though he doubted the Italian could hear him over the recurring explosions behind them.

The ground shook so much that they struggled to keep running. A blast close to them knocked half of them flat onto their stomachs. A great roll of air and heat shoved Francis to the ground and dashed his nose against it. He was so dizzy he barely perceived the hands grabbing at him as he struggled to his feet again, legs shaky and holding his bleeding nose, following the others at a renewed speed.

They could feel the heat licking at their heels, could see clumps of sod flying past them to add to the rumbling earth under their feet. It seemed like they were running for a day when the explosions finally ceased. When they stopped to take in their surroundings, their legs turned to jelly and they all more or less sank to the ground. After the loud blasts of the landmines, their panting seemed nonexistent to their ears.

"Well, that was close," Yao voiced for all of them, his hair mussed and the ends of a few strands burned from their close encounter with the explosives.

"Too close," Red added before standing and brushing herself off. "Someone was bound to have heard that, and after getting news of sighting you guys in Ohio a day past, you can bet the Overlord has ordered staunch security on the perimeter. They'll be here in minutes."

"We need to move, then," Arthur announced before getting to shaky feet. He was still anxious from their ordeal with the landmines, and he wasn't so sure he would be able to follow his own instructions. "Let's go." Then, remembering he didn't know where the fuck they were going in the first place, he turned to Red. "Where to?"

Red motioned with her hand. "There's an entrance to HQ around there somewhere. Come on."

No sooner had to gone a few feet in the indicated direction, however, than they heard voices approaching. They all froze, and Red turned to them, pressing a finger to her lips and motioning for them to get down. They were lying flat on their bellies in a dip in the land where a little creek used to flow, and the Organization scouts were traipsing the detonation site on the hill, weapons at the ready. The explosions, thankfully, had erased most of their footprints (and definitely the snow around them).

"Any sign?" one asked gruffly.

"Not even a toenail," another replied, bemused. "This doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. No one could have avoided that many mines and not gotten their guts blown to bits."

"Maybe it was one of them crazy squirrels again."

"Nah. Squirrels wouldn't leave behind this."

Despite being unable to see them, all the nations on the ground winced. They knew what it was the scouts were examining. Feliciano whimpered.

One of the scouts snorted. "A… what the fuck is that? Looks like a bunch of blue string. Mittens? A hat? What the fuck… someone was here."

"Where'd you think they—?"

There was a sudden blast further away, and all of them stiffened. Ludwig had to clamp a hand around Feliciano's mouth to keep him from screaming.

"What the fuck was that?"

"'Nother mine tripped. Probably whoever owned this hat's strewn all over the place now. Shall we see?"

"Aw man," the scout complained as he followed his companion off. "I hate cleaning up after 'em. Can't we just let the rats eat their guts like last time…?"

Five minutes ticked by before Red deemed it safe enough to roll into a crouch. The others followed suit. "Come on, now. Heads low, though. Wouldn't want to feed those rats."

Ivan was walking beside Red… again. Before the prospect wouldn't have bothered him, though her company wasn't at all pleasant, but now walking beside her was just downright degrading. He peered down once again at the handcuffs that glinted off his wrists and huffed. He didn't like this plan. Not at all.

"How much farther to the entrance?" he asked, just to get his attention off of the fact that he was restrained and bordering on helpless if a dire situation should arise.

Red's face was hidden behind her gas mask, but Ivan imagined the expression beneath it would be the exact same one he'd seen throughout their short time together—complete indifference. "We're almost there, don't worry. If we go any faster, it'll tip them off that something isn't right. Gotta be casual, remember?"

Ivan shook his head, wishing for the life of him that he hadn't agreed to be put in handcuffs, but he honestly had no choice. He still couldn't believe how it went down.

"All right," Red said as soon as they had ventured further into the stretch of woods. She motioned for them all to gather around before continuing, "We're close to one of the scout entrances to the Organization's HQ. Now, as you can imagine, we just can't waltz in there and hope to come out not resembling Swiss cheese—" Everyone had winced at the reference, but the sensitivity of her words was lost on her—"so I'll go in first, but I can't go in alone. There are at least a couple of guards posted at every entrance, and they're chosen for their bulk. I mean, I know I took out those three guys in Bethesda before, but I can't have one guy escaping to rat us out. And besides, I could use a gun then. We can't in the tunnels. The gunshot echoes would go pretty damn far, and that would just screw us big time."

Alfred's brow was furrowed and his face scrunched up the way it usually was when he was thinking. "Um, Red… where exactly are the headquarters?"

Red gave him a withering look. "Think, Alfred. Where is the one place a rebel group could prosper without worry of attack in D.C.?"

Alfred contemplated this for a moment before his eyes went wide. He appeared shocked, as if wondering how he could have not figured the answer out before. "The sewers." He peered back up at his daughter. "The old, unused portion they just replaced… they're underground."

Red nodded. "Exactly. Now, as I was saying, I'll go to throw them off our scent, seeing as I'm a 'member', but I'll need some assistance if this is ever going to work out." She seemed a little uncomfortable, as if embarrassed at the fact that she was requesting help. Ivan supposed that was why she wasn't outright asking.

When no one volunteered (or rather were peering around at each other to see who the unlucky soul would be), Red clarified, "This will require one of you to be bound in handcuffs and escorted at gunpoint to the tunnel entrance. And when I say these guys are bulky, I mean they're fucking shit-brick houses." She huffed, appearing angry with herself for being unable to do all of this unaided. No doubt the state thought she was good enough to do everything alone. Ivan wondered if she was the product of a miracle mitosis with Alfred.

He was pondering this thought, amusing himself with it, but a minute must have passed before he realized everyone's eyes were on him. He raised his eyebrows. "Um," was all he could get out…

… and after that he'd been clapped in a pair of cuffs and led off to the tunnel entrance. If he hadn't lived with his group for two months in a hostile frozen wasteland, Ivan would have called them all pussies. But, seeing as that title would be illogical if given to them after all that had happened and figuring Ivan would choose himself to do the deed in any normal situation anyway, the Russian surmised that it would be best if he just went along with it. Despite knowing that Red had the key to the cuffs and would hand it over to him once they were inside, Ivan still disliked being unable to respond to sudden changes in his environment with the quickness that came with having his limbs unrestrained.

"There." Red's voice made Ivan perk up. He studied the large cylindrical mass of stained and worn concrete thirty or so yards away and wondered why he felt somewhat disappointed. He supposed he had been expecting something grand. He mentally slapped himself. What had he been expecting from an unused sewer? Honestly.

"All right," Red began as her pace picked up. "Almost time to implement the plan. Do you remember what to do?"

Ivan scoffed. "What is there to remember? You toss me the key—"

"Shh!" Red hissed before lowering her voice. "We're too far into Organization territory to be revealing any of our plans. The Overlord has eyes everywhere. If we're lucky, he hasn't spotted us so far."

Ivan frowned. There were few things that gnawed at Ivan's patience more than being shushed, especially by someone as young and inexperienced as Red. He was beginning to regret going along with this. To get his mind off his temper, he began to ponder the oddity of the situation. A young girl in a gas mask disguise ordering around a bigger man in cuffs in order to get past the guards and into HQ…

Ivan's frowned deepened then and he eyed Red sternly. "This… reminds me of something."

"Hm?"

"This wasn't all your original idea, was it?"

Red didn't bothering looking at him (she never really did anyway), and despite her disguise Ivan could hear the smile in her voice. "Ah, still the suspicious one. Go on then, tell me. You were always good at collecting information."

Ivan didn't care for the reference to Cold War espionage, but he supposed that was Red's intention. Besides, it wasn't as if he was the only one at fault. "You took a leaf from old films… I do recall seeing something similar to this situation in, ah… A New Hope."

Red shrugged. "So what if I borrowed a bit from Star Wars? Big, dumb guards are big, dumb guards in any scenario. You think they'll have the capacity to figure out what we're reenacting before they're eating their own teeth?"

"That's not what I was meaning."

"What, then?"

"Being in the cuffs means I am the… Wookiee, da?"

"Mhm," she sounded rather smug.

"So that means that you would be Luke in disguise…"

"Yup."

Ivan's eyes narrowed. "I am sensing some discrimination here…"

"What discrimination?" Red asked innocently. They were now almost to the tunnel, so she whispered, "I'm the guy that ends up saving everyone, and you're the freaky primeval creature in the background that can only speak in grunts and growls. Sounds about right, huh?"

Ivan would have liked to retort (or better yet, slap her upside the head like her father had obviously neglected to do when she was younger), but they had arrived at the mouth of the tunnel and he was forced into silence. For all the time they'd spent walking toward it, Ivan hadn't considered it intimidating at all. But now that he got a good look at it, at how the dark half circle extended into complete blackness like the yawning mouth of a sleeping giant, he wasn't so sure if he wanted to end up trapped in there if something were to go wrong. I'll just have to make sure nothing does, he mused as Red slipped her handgun out of its holster at her side and pressed it to Ivan's ribs. He hoped Red didn't have a twitchy finger like her father did, but compared to all the other similarities he'd seen so far, he highly suspected it.

He stumbled a bit as Red shoved him abruptly and said, "I'm not shitting you, fucker. One wrong move, and you'll be dragging your leg all the way to your cell if you don't bleed out first." She snatched Ivan's arm up and tugged him back to her side, and Ivan made a show of weakly staggering to catch his feet. "Really," Red warned in a low voice. "Don't make any sudden moves. I've had too many people try to ambush me to think before I shoot. Just stick to your guy and I'll stick to mine."

Great. Ivan began to wonder if he'd teamed up with a grenade with its pin half pulled, but he figured he'd survived one bullet, so what harm would one more do him?

Speaking of which… His side wasn't doing as bad as it had been a week ago, but it was still pretty sore. He supposed the reason why he was chosen to go on this mission was because of the fact that he'd been hiding the discomfort for a while. Still, it had hurt when Alfred hadn't immediately jumped at the opportunity to scold him for straining himself. The man had just stood there, and Ivan knew he'd been staring, but when Ivan had looked at him Alfred's eyes were suddenly somewhere else…

I'm not falling for that cat and mouse game again. This is the last time—

He'd been so caught in his thoughts that he didn't notice they had arrived at their destination until he was staring directly at one of the guards. He shook his head. Stop thinking about him.

Red hadn't been lying about the guards' stature. Both were large, though one was taller and thinner while another was shorter and fatter. They were both wearing what appeared to be some form of military grade glasses, round and dark, almost bug-eyed. The shorter one sported messy pepper hair and a goatee slashed with silver. The other was bald with a brown mustache and as it was… a rather long, curling nosehair. Ivan redirected his stare to it as Red spoke and tried his best not to laugh.

"Hey, look who's turned up," the shorter acknowledged as he lowered his weapon to nod in Red's direction.

"Rusty," the taller observed before frowning. "What are you doing here? Your orders were to scope out Bethesda and report back to Gate 3. This is Gate 11."

"I know how to count, Doyle. Not all of us dropped out of the eighth grade," Red replied smoothly, and Ivan nearly glared in disbelief. They were supposed to catch the guards with their defenses down, not force them to raise some ten feet high!

Doyle took the time to scoff while the bald guard accused, "And you're alone. Where's the rest of your team, captain?"

Red didn't miss a beat. "Did you not just hear what went down outside? All that rumbling means that someone tripped some of the defenses, in case you didn't know. We went to Bethesda and found traces that someone had penetrated the outer defensive ring and I tracked him to the woods down by the water." As evidence, she pressed the barrel of her gun further into Ivan's chest and gave him a rough jostle by the back of his coat. Ivan almost forgot to appear nervous at the weapon pointed at him. Had that nosehair gotten longer? "Turns out this guy had friends. I'm bringing him in while my team picks up what's left of them in Maryland."

The two guards exchanged knowing scowls. "Why bother?" the taller asked with a snort. Ivan chewed his tongue to suppress a giggle as that nosehair bounced a little. "Leave 'em there, we have no use for them. Better that the pieces of shit are food for the crows."

Red's tone was impatient and biting. "Sometimes I wonder if either one of you have attended any of the billion defense meetings. 'All remains are to be collected for examination.' Overlord's orders. Now if you're finished playing twenty questions, there's an empty cell waiting to be occupied." She took hold of Ivan's arm (her grip leaving nothing to be desired) and yanked him forward, intending to walk straight in between the two guards. Ivan began to worry. They'd been standing close to the guards before, but now they were practically nose-to-nose with them. How in the world would they not spot Red passing him the key?

The taller man stopped them, and Ivan was unable to breathe. "Forgetting something?" He presented Red with glasses identical to the pair each of the guards was wearing. "Kind of hard to see in the pitch black without these. And you call me a rookie, captain."

Red practically snatched the glasses from his thin fingers and gave an overly polite, "Why thank you, Walton."

"Gonna have to take that mask off to get them on, eh?" Doyle said with an expectant and wicked smile. "Always wondered what you looked like under there. You a leper or something?"

Walton gave a booming laugh then, and he actually sucked his nosehair into the nostril it was curling from. "That would be quite a title. Captain Leper."

Red laughed along with them, though hers was considerably quieter and involved less snorting. Ivan was so caught up in staring in disbelief at what was going on that he barely felt Red's gun hand twitch and nearly failed to catch the key that was dropped from it. Not that the guards were paying any attention. They were practically sobbing and shitting their pants at once with laughter.

Red's laugh petered off and she gasped a bit as if to catch her breath. "Yeah, man, good one. Y'know, it's a wonder how you were recruited. You're definitely a pair of wiseasses."

Doyle stopped laughing to say rather arrogantly, "Takes a little cleverness to get that title. Probably what's got us by."

Red starting laughing again and leaned in, placing her hand on Doyle's shoulder for support as both the guards were sent into guffaws. "Yeah, well… I never said you were clever." It was then that Ivan realized he could no longer feel the cylindrical poke of Red's gun at his side, and before he could even begin to wonder where it was (or what to do with his now freed hands), there was a sharp crack. Doyle screamed, and Red shoved him away so that he fell to his knees. He was holding his bleeding head, and his glasses had fallen half off his face, dangling by his ears. Blood dripped from the butt of Red's gun.

"Sonofabitch!" Walton swore and stumbled away before raising his shotgun. But he was just as soon giving screams of his own as another crack signaled the breaking of his trigger arm. Another twist and the skin parted to reveal snapping tendon, red muscle, and a white shard of bone. Walton didn't even have the capacity to scream as the back of his knee was kicked in and he tumbled to the ground, but not before Ivan snatched the shotgun from his hand, grinning behind the guard.

"Clever, da?" Ivan quipped as he turned the shotgun over in his hands, examining it. "Well polished. If you had more experience with it you would have been able to shoot her before I broke your arm."

"Bas… tard," Walton hissed his from his place curled up on the ground. He was cradling his broken arm, spattered with his own blood.

Bodies hit the floor, and Ivan looked up to see that Doyle had launched himself onto Red's front, sitting on her legs and struggling to snatch up her flailing arms while blinking blood from his eye. Ivan began to move toward her, but Red snapped, "No! You finish off Walton."

Ivan conceded and decided that the guard needed a little punishment before being dispatched. The Russian scowled and kicked the man in his stomach, Walton sobbing and coughing up clots of dark blood. He wanted to say so much to him, curse the man for scum, but the man didn't deserve to be spoken to. Instead, Ivan stooped and pulled the chain that linked his handcuffs over the guard's throat, pressing down until Walton's gurgling and writhing ceased and his eyes bulged, flooding with blood. When he was through, he was alarmed to hear nothing but silence in the tunnel. He glanced over and saw Red pulling a jackknife from Doyle's chest. She wiped it off on the dead guard's shirt before folding it up and putting it back in her pocket. "Grab his ankles," she told him before doing the same with Doyle.

Together they dragged both bodies outside (not without a careful look around to make sure everything was clear) and into the trees where the group was hiding on their stomachs in a dip behind a hill that led up to the water's edge. They helped take the bodies down to the shore, and they used the rope they'd retrieved from the Chicago house (at the sight of it Feliciano broke out in tears, despite the rope never being used for any sort of task before) to hogtie the men and weigh their limbs down with rocks washed up by the river. Ludwig felt like scum rolling the men into the water and watching them bob away on the current before sinking below the surface, but then he recalled Gilbert, his open bleeding head and dead eyes, and he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry. Not anymore.

No translations

A Word From the Writer: So what, I borrowed from Star Wars a bit. Who doesn't like Star Wars (not counting episodes I, II, and III, cause they were utter crap). And I have nothing against Chewie or Wookies in general. I love Chewie, but I just thought including a little spat between Red and Russia would emphasize the fact that she doesn't like him (or rather doesn't trust him). Nosehairs. I had to make the brutes look stupid somehow, come on. And nosehairs are certainly one of the most eye catching negative aspect of a person's face... aside from uni-brows. Uni-brows annoy the HELL out of me.

So, I've been telling you guys this fic is gradually catching up to me, and that's mostly because I'm reading a ton of lemon or am just generally distracted. For example, just this past week I've managed to come down with a case of Bell's Palsy. I don't know what happened, but sometime during the beginning of the week, my immune system checked out and let some virus in that froze the nerves (in the muscles) in the left side of my face. So, as it happens, I am now unable to blink my left eye. I got this whole cyclops thing going on where one eye blinks while the other just twitches (basically like I'm winking, but creepier because it never stops). It's annoying as hell and very distracting, seeing as my left eye dries out and I have to stop every once in a while to manually blink it (yes, take my finger and pull my eyelid down so my eye stops stinging). I also now have to wear an eye patch while I sleep so it doesn't dry out. And just recently (as if it couldn't get any worse), it feels like the left part of my jaw has been suckerpunched and my smile is off kilter. It's a good thing I went in to the doctor's today and got some meds before one side of my face started drooping altogether. Lol, so much has happened this year with my health it's not even funny. I found out I've got some degeneration disease in my neck from whiplash when I was younger that causes arthritis (yes, I already have it), and my whole skeleton is skewed slightly to one side, meaning that my jaw is out of place and usually pops when I'm eating or opening it, my spine is curved to one side, and my hips are crooked. I'm just one big walking asymmetrical mess. If only Death the Kid could see me, oh, his face...

Anyway, Bell's Palsy is something doctors don't really understand (lol, yay) and it will go away in 10-14 days. But I don't know how the steroids prescribed to me will effect my mood, and hopefully I won't be perpetually reading lemon and not writing for the whole period I have this thing. In the meantime, I'll just have to go on blinking one eye... and presenting a project for school. Oy, this is already a fail week. And how many times do people get Bell's Palsy in their lifetimes? Anyone? Just me? Figures...

Apart from my shitty luck, more chapters next week!